For now the latest Alberta bender is over, and it's time to take
stock of certain destructive lifestyle choices. The budgetary cupboards
are bare, yet Canada's allegedly "richest" province has an unfunded
municipal infrastructure deficit of up to $24 billion. A badly needed new cancer treatment facility has just been delayed
past 2020. The long-overdue plan to build or modernize over 230 schools
by 2018 is threatened by an $11-billion "fiscal hole" in provincial
finances.

According to the Alberta Urban Municipalities Association,
"Alberta continues to have the lowest overall tax system in Canada,
with the lowest fuel taxes, no sales tax, no health premiums, no capital
or payroll taxes, and low personal and corporate income taxes.
Albertans and Alberta businesses would pay at least $10.6 billion more
in taxes each year if Alberta had the tax system of any other province."

While provincial finances are grim and real estate values are about to fall off
a cliff, the real deficit is not economic but intellectual. Some
observers have made the case that the free-market mindset that got us in
this mess is actually a long-term project of powerful outside forces eager to acquire Canada's treasure trove of resources at rock bottom prices.

If so, this audacious endgame has been a
stunning success. The anti-tax sentiment has intruded so far into the
collective psyche of Alberta voters that they almost have Stockholm
Syndrome, punishing any politician that threatens to raise resource
rents. The last Alberta election almost
saw a Fraser Institute alumna become premier. If there is an upside to
the most recent downturn in Alberta, it is bringing into crystal clear
focus the abject fiscal failure of decades of "free market" resource
policies promoted by well-funded think tanks.

- Meanwhile, Oxfam's Winnie Byanyima sees inequality and climate change as the two most important policy challenges of 2015.

- Keith Humphreys explores the gap between the rich and the poor in rates of smoking cessation. And Charles Blow offers a reminder as to how expensive it is to be poor.

- Joe Fiorito rightly argues that there's no secret as to how to end homelessness if we have the will to make resources available to provide housing. And Jordon Cooper notes that while we may be more attentive to homelessness in the dead of winter, we should want to eliminate it year-round.